John Ensign's Blog

Senator Ensign met with community leaders, Chamber of Commerce members and business owners at a breakfast in Carson City where he discussed the economy yesterday. More from the Nevada Appeal.

Sen. John Ensign decried the huge projected deficits in the budget bill working its way through the U.S. Congress before a breakfast crowd at the Carson Nugget Wednesday morning.

"If you look at the budget bill as it stands, and take all of the debt built up from George Washington through George W. Bush, we will double that debt in the next five years, and triple it in the next 10 years," said Nevada's GOP senator. "It is unsustainable."

Addressing business leaders at the Northern Nevada Development Authority breakfast, Ensign said that to handle this kind of debt, the highest marginal tax rate would have to be raised to 88 percent.

"What we are witnessing is a Europeanization of America, taking over private industry, trying to tell how much we are going to pay CEOs, the bailouts, too much involvement in the marketplace," he said.

Ensign said the auto company bailout was one of the worst things President Bush did while he was in office last year.

"I believe in saving the auto companies, if they were savable, and that meant that they needed to go into Chapter 11 reorganization bankruptcy," he said.

Ensign talked about his alternative budget proposal that focused on the housing market.

"Housing is what brought the economy down," Ensign said. "We all understand that. It would make sense to me that if that's what brought the economy down, then you should fix housing first."

Ensign also called for lowering corporate tax rates, citing the success of Ireland as an example, though that country is now struggling with its worst economic downturn on record, according to its government.

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